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I've decided to share a very emotional experience with everyone. The last four days I have been in New Orleans with my youth group for the Jesus Justice Jazz gathering.

Day 1
Okay, so on the first day we got up to go to the airport and luckily did NOT die on the plane (lol....duh). When we got to New Orleans, it was like no place I'd ever seen.... and it was REALLY hot and humid compared to where I live in MD. After we had gotten settled into the hotel...and btw, we stayed at the Hilton on the river and it was AWESOME! The rooms were smallish, but whatever. We ended up eating dinner at about 4 at a little family-owned pizza place (which had the BEST pizza I ever ate) so we could go to the Super dome and see the guest speakers and the performances... I wasn't feeling too well, so even though I was there, I wasn't completely there. When I got back to the hotel I crashed... I was DONE....

Day 2
I woke up the next morning, and like a lot of other people, we went to church that morning, but not the kind of church most would expect. It was in a huge hall and there was a group on stage singing contemporary praise songs and after like four songs there would be a reading or something. I think I ate a Pop-Tart that morning for breakfast. As soon as service let out we headed back to our rooms. Thirty minutes later or so, my mom, 2 kids from my group; Eric and Will, and I went out to the French Market in the French Quarter. We had so much fun there.... There were so many amazing people there. There was a woman there from Indonesia who had been living in New Orleans for about 12 years before Katrina hit and then, during the recovery moved to Chicago. She was there selling T-Shirts. There was another guy who was helping to clean up from Katrina and decided to take the metal that had fallen off of buildings and other rubble of the roads and make jewelry and pins and stuff out of it. It was so amazing to see him work. He made this pair of earrings out of a couple of metal forks he had found... We ate lunch at a place called the Magnolia grill and I tried something I had never had before: Crawfish...lemme tell ya somethin'....i love crawfish. Later at around 5-ish the whole youth group ate at a really fancy French restaurant. That night, everyone from my youth group went down to the Super dome to see the performances and guest speakers again. There was this guy who got on stage in a wheel chair who had no legs... he kinda made a joke out of it too... he said something like this,"I'm going to answer the question I'm sure most of you are wondering right now and that is 'where are my legs?' Well, Lemme tell ya, one week, a couple of friends and I were camping and well, there was nothing else to eat....." He got a really good response out of that one.... what had really happened was he had nerve damage in his legs since he was born, so the doctors amputated his legs at the knees and thought that maybe he would be able to learn to walk using mechanical legs, but at age four they discovered that he would never be able to walk on his legs and amputated them all together..... after him there was this story of a boy in Africa who's class was being called to be part of the rebel army. Those who wanted to be part of them would walk across the stage in the auditorium and have a small incision made and have a mixture of cocaine and gunpowder called brown-brown rubbed into the wound to make them unable to make proper decisions. The ones that decided they did NOT want to be part of the army would have their right hand chopped off so that they could not shoot a firearm in support of the government. So, this kid went up on the stage and put his hand high in the air and then put his hand on the table for them to cut it off. He walked out of the auditorium with his nub held high above his head for all to see... It was such an amazing story of courage... you kinda had to be there to get the full effect. After that story Group 1 Crew played a couple of songs and then we all went back to the hotel and crashed.

Day 3
Okay... so my brother is being really rude so i guess i'll have to finish days 3 and 4 some other time... which means I dont get to discuss the Skillet concert or the convention center, our service project, the ferry ride or the dueling piano... yes, that's right...PIANOOOOOOOO.....